Five mobile racers that don't feel like a chore

Racing games on phones live or die on controls. Tilt steering still gives me nightmares, so everything on this list uses either touch steering or a simple hold-to-drift setup, because that's what actually works one-handed on a train.

Top of the pile for me is anything that gets the drift-and-boost loop right. When you can hold a slide through a corner and feel the boost charge, a racer suddenly becomes a rhythm game, and that's the good stuff. Neon Drift League nails this better than anything else we've tested this year.

The trap a lot of mobile racers fall into is padding. Endless unlock trees and identical tracks with a new coat of paint. The ones I keep coming back to are honest about their length and just give you good corners to take.

My advice when you're picking one: ignore the screenshots and watch thirty seconds of real gameplay. Look at whether the frame rate holds when the screen gets busy. A racer that stutters mid-turn is worse than no racer at all.

We'll keep updating this as we test more. If there's a racer you swear by, the contact page is right there — I'm always looking for the next one to lose an evening to.